Varieties of Governance in China

Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages

Jie Lu

A new theoretical framework for understanding institutional change and local governance

New arguments that can synthesize contradictory findings on the performance of formal and informal institutions in Chinese villages' governance

A new set of survey data

Varieties of Governance in China

Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages

Jie Lu

Description

It is well understood that "good institutions" are essential for good governance. But even institutions that follow similar designs vary significantly with regard to performance across countries and even across regions within the same country. Following China's abolishment of the Commune system to accommodate market-oriented reforms in the 1980s, decentralized, grassroots democracy was introduced in rural China in order to improve the quality of local governance. In this book, Jie Lu looks at variance among local governance institutions in China to examine under what conditions indigenously cultivated institutions or externally imposed institutions are able to succeed, particularly under pressures of economic modernization.

Lu argues that any governance institution can perform effectively as long as it can produce collective action and accountability, but the relative effectiveness of institutions is contingent upon the social environment in which they are embedded. When economic conditions prompt outward migration, social environments are reshaped such that rules-based formal institutions will trump relation-based indigenous forms. In identifying the optimal social conditions for the effective performance of different governance institutions and theorizing the effects of social change on these institutions, Lu deepens understanding of how institutions, particularly in developing countries, change, and under what conditions institutional modernization or engineering may succeed or fail.

Varieties of Governance in China

Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages

Jie Lu

Author Information

Jie Lu is Assistant Professor of Government at American University. Lu studies local governance, the political economy of institutional change, public opinion, and political participation. Lu's work has appeared or will appear in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Psychology, Politics & Society, Political Communication, Journal of Democracy, China Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary China.

Varieties of Governance in China

Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages

Jie Lu

Reviews and Awards

"This is an impressive study that leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that migration will transform both urban and rural China during this century. Varieties of Governance in China is a multidisciplinary triumph for asking challenging questions on the future of Chinese rural governance and demonstrating that the resultant conversation has the potential to bring scholars from anthropology, sociology, religion, history, political science, and economics together." --Journal of International Affairs

"This book makes a significant contribution to the study of institutional change and rural governance in China. Lu delivers his unique and original analysis in a straightforward manner that is easy to comprehend for graduates and undergraduate students in the fields of China studies, political science, economics, sociology and anthropology." -- The China Quarterly

"Jie Lu's book is a major theoretical statement on the role of institutions in local administration; it is also a demonstration of the crucial part played by a place's social environment-and ongoing changes therein-in grassroots governance. The book's multi-method-based framework makes it not only a model of social science, but also positions it to supercede some previous interpretations of how rural China actually operates." --Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California-Irvine, and author of Contesting Citizenship in Urban China

"This book is about how Chinese rural communities are caught between tradition and modernity. It shows how these communities coexist and interact with modern institutions of governance, while transforming and adapting themselves in the process. It is a must-read if one wants to know about what local community life in China will look like in the future." --Wenfang Tang, Stanley Hua Hsia Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University of Iowa